Kandahar, Afghanistan — John Walker Lindh, the young American found fighting alongside the Taliban, will likely leave today for the United States, where he faces trial on charges of conspiring to kill fellow countrymen, U.S. officials said.
Lindh will be flown from the USS Bataan in the northern Arabian Sea where he has been held, the officials said on condition of anonymity. The officials would give few details, saying Lindh would stop somewhere in the region most likely at the U.S. base at the southern Afghan city of Kandahar before continuing on to his final destination.
U.S. government officials have said Lindh would be handed over to the Department of Justice and the federal court district in northern Virginia, where a Frenchman, Zacarias Moussaoui, is awaiting trial for alleged complicity in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Sunday said Lindh would arrive "sometime in the days ahead."
Lindh, a 20-year-old Californian who converted to Islam at age 16, allegedly trained at an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan.
He could face life in prison if convicted of the charges he conspired to kill Americans.
He was captured in November in the siege of Kunduz and survived the bloody prison uprising by Taliban and al-Qaida members near Mazar-e-Sharif in which CIA operative Johnny "Mike" Spann was killed.
Lindh is the last prisoner remaining on the Bataan, the amphibious attack ship in the Arabian Sea initially used to confine higher-level Taliban suspects.
Other prisoners from the war in Afghanistan are being held in Kandahar pending their transfer to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Lindh, however, is being sent to the United States for trial because he is an American citizen.
The search for Taliban and al-Qaida fugitives continued Monday when U.S. special forces swooped down on a village south of Kabul and seized four people suspected of links to a prominent Taliban fugitive.
The operation, confirmed by Afghan sources, took place near Khost where Army Sgt. 1st Class Nathan Ross Chapman was killed in an ambush Jan. 4.
He was the first U.S. soldier killed in combat.
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